In recent years, it has become more common for automotive electronic systems, such as engine control systems, anti-lock brake system (ABS), and airbag safety systems, to be designed to use one or more central controller systems that are coupled to multiple electronic sensors distributed throughout the automobile. For example, an automotive air bag system may have a central airbag controller coupled to a number of acceleration sensors distributed in various places in the automobile and one or more airbags that are configured to be deployed via explosive squibs. During operation, the network of acceleration sensors sends sensor information in the form of analog voltages to the central controller, which performs an analog-to-digital conversion on each of the analog voltages, and determines whether or not to deploy the airbag based on the converted analog values from the sensors. Similarly, an antilock brake system or an engine control systems will monitor analog voltages emanating from various sensors and systems that measure speed, pressure, acceleration, temperature, and the like.
One way in which the plethora of analog signals is handled is by using one or more analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) resident in the respective controller. For example, a microcontroller integrated circuit having one or more analog-to-digital converters resident on the chip may be used. In systems with multiple analog inputs, a multiplexer may be used to handle multiple analog input signals. By time division multiplexing the various analog signals at the input, one analog-to-digital converter may be used to perform a conversion on multiple analog input lines.